Drawing of flying saucer (above). Caption: The drawing shows [artist's] conception of the interior of a flying disc, always providing there are such things, and that they are man-made... The disc jockeys at the controls, reading from left to right, are NOT Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Superman. [Who in the comics and movie serials of the time were all emblematic of space travel and interactions with aliens. See, e.g., Superman Sunday comic from 1948defeating an invasion from Mars, and a Buck Rogers comic below from the end of 1947 where he defeats an alien fleet of rocket ships.]

Denver Rocky Mountain News, p. 10, Letters to Editor, July 6, 1947

Those Flying Discs

Editor: After reading and hearing about those discs flying over Washington, Oregon and Oklahoma, my buddy and I have come to the conclusion that those fellows really saw them. As far as we can figure out they are space ships and have come from Mars. Scientists have been talking about building space ships to travel to the Moon and other planets, but it seems as though someone else has already beat the Earth-people in traveling through space. We suggest that you contact some space patrol at once and find out why we were not warned of their coming aforehand. Had we been notified we could have prepared a warm welcome for them. T-SGT. DAVID CADENHEAD, SGT. A. N. DEANGELIS, Fitzsimons Hospital.SE

What Do You Think The Flying Saucers Are, That Have Been Sighted All Over The U.S.?M

MARY CASSIDY, housewife, route C, Peru--Might be anything. Maybe they are machines carrying men from Mars. In this day and age, anything is possible. I think we can expect the works now.

Lima (OH) News, July 7, 1947

Wapak Saucer-Seer Lacks Nerve To Tell

WAPAKONETA, July 7 (UP) -- The nation's most embarrassed saucer-seer today was Richard L. Bitters, editor of The Wapakoneta Daily News, and former Lima newsman. Bitters revealed that he and his wife saw a number of the objects on the night of June 23 -- two days before they were first reported in the Pacific northwest. But Editor Bitters sat on his scoop two weeks before he could get up the nerve to report it.

"It was about 9:30 p.m. while walking home from a movie (which, however, was not a 'Man from Mars' picture) that my wife and I noticed a disc-like missile flying in a northward direction," Bitters said. “The flying saucers failed to maintain an even course in the sky but proceeded to weave in and out of view. As mystery phraseology would term it, a downright 'spooky' feeling prevailed each time the silvery discs made their appearance."

What is the Flying Discus? Does it mean the end of the world? Is it a new secret weapon? Who is testing it out? The Men From Mars? The Russians? Our own scientists? Is it all just a lot of hooey? Is it a freak of nature? Are the people who claim to have seen them simply bilious and seeing spots? Is it radioactivity caused by the atom bomb? Is it the cosmic ray?

In other words: Is it fact or fancy? ...Mayor Garnet Coulter: I think it's a Martian contractor at work. These flying saucers are probably a new type of construction material he wants us to use when we build the new city hall.

Don't ever sell Gastonia short. If people from 39 different states, District of Columbia and Canada swear they saw cracked atoms, tracer bullets from Mars, silver saucers, or what have you, floating through the heavens then why can't three upstanding citizens of Gastonia see the same phenomena?

Of course dozens of theories are offered to explain the whole business. However, in our opinion they are not meteors, they are not ice crystals, and they are not projectiles sent here by Mars to scare us into conniption fits. The mystery boils down to two possibilities.

(A) They are experimental weapons dispatched here by a foreign power...we shall describe as R----a.

(B) They are also experimental weapons developed by our own defense services being tried out in secret. Naturally neither the Army nor the air forces will admit they know what it all means -- if they know.

One Group Bays Eight Discs As Big As Five Room Houses Landed On Mountain

By International News Service

...A sample polling of citizens on San Francisco streets showed that two theories were holding the lead among the uninformed:

1. That something on Mars is trying to send a message to earth.

2. That those war-time Japanese paper balloons still are coming over, after wandering about the Pacific since V-J Day.

Lewiston (MN) Daily Sun, p. 4, Editorial, Monday, July 7, 1947

THE FLYING SAUCERS

…the fact the dinguses have been sighted over Augusta [MN] puts a different face on the matter, and there is no longer any doubt the mysterious saucers really do exist. Of course dozens of theories are offered to explain the whole business.However, in our opinion they are not meteors, they are not ice crystals, andthey are not projectiles sent here by Mars to scare us into conniption fits. The mystery boils down to two possibilities: (A) They are experimental weapons dispatched here by a foreign power… (B) They are also experimental weapons developed by our own defense services being tried out in secret…

Vidette (IN) Messenger, p. 6 (Editorial page), July 7, 1947

Fact Or Fancy

“…Spotting the celestial saucers is rapidly becoming a national pastime, with the only equipment necessary being an imagination and a gullible audience. What you see in the heavens is entirely up to you with one exception: the object should have some resemblance to a disc… It may oscillate, gyrate, vacillate or even titillate; it may hover, come and go, or flash across the horizon at unprecedented speed… What are the mysterious flying discs: men from Mars, spots before the eyes of a jittery America or a secret weapon?”

Melbourne (Australia) The Age, p. 2, July 7, 1947

"Flying Saucers" Mystify

"The Age" Special Correspondent in New York and A.A.P.

Americans are baffled by reports of "Flying Saucers" which, according to observers, are round metallic discs racing high across the sky singly or in groups.

...Explanations include:--(1) Signals from Mars, (2) "saucer hysteria" by people possibly emotionally upset by fear of atomic war, (3) new experimental navy planes known as "flying pancakes," (4) weather kites released by meteorological bureaus, (5) something to do with atomic experiments, (6) reflections from motor car spotlights, and (7) meteors.

Elyria (OH) Chronicle-Telegram, July 7, 1947

Says "Saucers" Are Nothing To Get Up In The Air About

CHICAGO -- R.L. Farnsworth said today the "flying saucers" reportedly racing through U.S. skies aren't anything to get up in the air about. "People have been seeing things in the sky for years," he said. ...He's a member of the Fortean Society, a club for experts on the unusual things -- on land and in the air -- people have seen and thought they have seen through the centuries. The club was founded in honor of Charles Fort, a diligent man who devoted his life to collecting four volumes of odd happenings.

"This isn't the first time people have seen legitimate spots in the sky." Farnsworth said. "It happened at least three times in the last century, and plenty of other times, too. Nobody ever found out what any of the objects were." Farnsworth said he wouldn't be surprised at anything the alleged saucers turned out to be. He's president of the U.S. Rocket Society and is planning a trip to the moon some day, "Nothing surprises me," he said. "I wouldn't even be surprised if the flying saucers were remote control electronic eyes from Mars."

Chicago Sun, p. 2, Tuesday, July 8, 1947

Rocket Expert Hints Disks Are Visitors From Venus

…R. L. Farnsworth of Glen Ellyn, a member of the U.S. Rocketry Society, contributed to the interplanetary theory yesterday to the mass of scientific information expounded since the first appearance of the mysterious disks. It is possible, he said, that the planet Venus has evolved a form of life able to fly by use of electric currents… If the flying disks were really fish from Venus, they might not be able to live long in the atmosphere of Earth on an exploratory voyage.

“This isn’t the first time people have seen legitimate spots in the sky,” said Farnsworth. “It happened at least three times in the last century and plenty of other times, too. Nobody ever found out what any of the objects were.” Mysterious bodies whirling though the skies were seen in 1851 by the Rev. W. Read, an English astronomer; in 1863, by Henry Waldner, a Swiss astronomer, and in 1880 by residents of Kattenau, Germany. Farnsworth, who hopes to make a trip to the moon some day, belongs to the Fortean Society, a club of experts on odd happenings through the centuries. He wouldn’t be surprised, he said, if the disks proved to be electronic eyes from Mars…”

Rochester (IN) News-Sentinel, p. 1, July 7, 1947

Rochester Folk Blame ‘Sky Discs’ On Imagination

…A more scientific approach was made by Deputy Sheriff Porter Rhodes who became intensely interested through the mounting pile of accounts of “space ships.” He dug into his research laboratory with a fervor which produced a Popular Mechanics magazine showing blueprints and photograph of a pancake plane which closely resembles the descriptions given by the “see-ers” of the “saucers.”

Chicago Daily Times, p. 3, July 7, 1947

‘Flying discs’ called real by 2 air veterans

By HENRY HEIL

Two aviation veterans who gazed from high altitudes at the world-disturbing “flying saucers” agreed today the weird devices were real. But they differed on theories of their origin. In Chicago on business, Capt. Emil J. Smith, of Seattle, Wash., United Air Lines pilot for nearly 14 years, declared: “These flying saucers are man-made, I am certain. There are definite indications that they may be controlled from the ground. It’s my further belief they are being used in some experimental operation by our own armed forces.”

But Kenneth Arnold …a pilot for nearly 15 years, is not so certain that the strange contraptions are made on this planet. Arnold, who was the first to sight the “saucers” on June 24… said he hoped the devices were really the work of the U.S. Army. But he told the TIMES in a phone conversation: “If our government knows anything about these devices, the people should be told at once. A lot of people out here are very much disturbed. Some think these things may be from another planet. But they aren’t harming anyone and I think it would be the wrong thing to shoot one of the down—even if can be done. Their high speed would completely wreck them…”

Another world—Arnold, in pointing tothe possibility of these discs being from another world, said, regardless of their origin, they apparently were traveling to some reachable destination. Whoever controlled them, he said, obviously wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. …He said discs were making turns so abruptly in rounding peaks that it would have been impossible for human pilots inside survived the pressure. So, he too thinks they are controlled from elsewhere, regardless of whether it’s from Mars, Venus, or our own planet.

Salt Lake City Deseret New, p. 3, July 7, 1947

Author of ‘Discs’ Story To Seek Proof

BOISE AP Kenneth Arnold, whose June 24 story that he had seen flying saucers over Washington State has created the biggest to-do since Orson Welles Man From Mars broadcast startled the nation several years ago, is going hunting for the peculiar objects which now have been reported seen in 36 states and Canada. …Arnold’s story… also brought him quantities of fan mail, he revealed today. Fans Want to Help—“None of the writers has called me screwball,” he said. “They really want to help figure this thing out.” Many of the correspondents placed religious interpretation on his report he said, and “one fellow in absolute seriousness wrote that he believed the flying saucers were responsible for peculiar fog conditions recently in Los Angeles.” Other writers suggested the discs were visitations from another planet.

“…People are on edge,” a prominent Denver psychiatrist said. “They’re scared and insecure about the possibility of ‘Buck Rogers’ atomic warfare. “They have a fear of being annihilated.”

Tucson (AZ) Daily Citizen, p. 1, Monday, July 7, 1947

Pale Balloons May Be ‘Discs’

“All this talk about ‘flying saucers,’ ‘yo-yos,’. and ‘clams’ is most mystifying. [Discussion of 6 weather balloons sent up every day locally by American Airlines and Army Signal Corp]. …at the risk of being called an unbeliever, I’m going to tell my wife and kiddies not to be worrying too much about the advent of ‘men from Mars’.” Besides Ed Goyette of the Chamber of Commerce says, "There are limited housing facilities available to newcomers in Tucson, be theymen from Marsor Anytown, U.S.A."

Visitors From Mars? …That there may be intelligent life on Mars is probable to some astronomers, says Dr. Spitzer. Assuming that life on Mars developed earlier than it did on earth, the Martians may have been civilized for millions of years compared with our thousands. “In such a case, Martian scientific knowledge, and Martian understanding of nature would, of course, be enormously greater than ours,” Dr. Spitzer concludes. In fact, men from Mars may have already visited earth. “Unless they had spent some time in a large city or had landed sufficiently recently to be photographed,” he said, “we would have no record of their having been here. Any few men who had seen them would probably not be believed by anyone else.”

Harlington (TX) Valley Morning Star, p. 21, July 27, 1947

Men from Mars May Already Have Visit[ed] Earth, Says Prof

NEW YORK (UP) Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr., associate professor of astrophysics [at Yale University] …disagreed with many other astronomers in saying that Mars probably is the best bet for man to find life other than his own planet. Some scientists believe that Venus may be more suitable for life, although Spitzer said Mars may be the first rocket stop. In fact, he believes that “men from Mars”may already be on this planet, or at least have visited here. "Unless they had spent more time in a large city or had landed sufficiently recently to be photographed," he said, "we would have no record of their having been here. Any few men who had seen them probably would not be believed by anyone else.”

California conversation dealt less with weather yesterday, turned, instead, to a discussion of dervish disks. While youngsters cupped their hands over their eyes and stared into the ether for the “flying saucers,” oldsters theorized. People talked disks at the beach. They talked them on the street corner. Ministers mentioned them in some churches. Almost everybody had an opinion. …Miss Mabel Brotherton, Bakersfield: “Somebody is experimenting. I’m not letting the reports perturb me, for I think Uncle Sam is responsible for whatever objects people are seeing. Of course, there is the Martian angle. We are sending projectiles miles high to take pictures of earth, and if Mars is inhabited, people there may be trying similar experiments. But I discredit that possibility. We haven’t reached that stage of scientific achievement, and I doubt the Martians have. [Other very common opinions were Russian secret weapons (2 people) or tests of U.S. secret weapons (4 other people); one, an aviator in WWI, thought they were some unusual atmospheric condition.]

The Windsor (Ontario) Star, p. 7, Letter to Editor, July 7, 1947

Maybe Orson Welles Had Something!

Maybe Orson Welleswasn’t so far out at that. The reports of “Flying Saucers” seen above this continent are too numerous and circumstantial to be disregarded entirely from the standpoint of possible interplanetary visitors to the earth. It may also be recalled that reports of similar occurrences have come in the past two years from Sweden and Great Britain. Even the esoteric gobbledygook of crackpot mystics who advance fantastic, full-blown accounts ofextra-terrestrial civilizations, of which the entire details have been “revealed” to them, cannot do away with the facts that:

(a)Interplanetary flightis scientifically possible, and

(b) That intelligent life possibly—indeed, probably—exists on other worlds.

The most interesting aspect of the “Flying Saucer” stories is the close approximation all accounts bear to what we might logically expect to be the first revelation of extra-terrestrial visitors.

*Space vessels would likely be shaped as oblate spheroids.

*Their flight would be rapid and soundless.

*If powered by advanced developments of electronic forces, they might well exhibit a shining or luminous appearance.

*If vessels were of small size, a number would probably navigate in company—if one large one were the main transport, it would probably carry smaller craft for exploration of any planet investigated.

*Brief and distant appearances of the exploratory craft would be the first indication of such visitors as the main base of the expedition would naturally be located at first in some isolated and solitary region until the crew collected basic data about Earth and its inhabitant.

…This does not, of course, prove that “Flying Saucers” are interplanetary visitors, but the facts give support to such a hypothesis. This being so, the following questions arise:

*Would such visitors be a variation of the human animal, or completely non-human?

*Would it be possible to establish communication with a race of beings intelligent enough to create space vehicles?

*Have we a means of tracing their origin? Locating their terrestrial base?

*Have we any defence against them?

*Has any thought been given by authorities toward means of making contact with them if they should land in an inhabited area?

We should do all we can to prevent, if these speculations prove well-founded, an “Orson Welles” type of scare, but we should be prepared to face whatever may happen in the near future. LOGICIAN Windsor

Denver Rocky Mountain News, p. 1, July 8, 1947

Denver Gapes Skyward To See Flying Saucers

…Arctic CivilizationSuspected—The Voice of the Brotherhood of the White Temple, Dr. M. Doreal, whose church is completing a mountain refuge from atomic war, reported his observations: “Inside the Arctic Circle, there is buried civilization which legend says was destroyed by balls of fire. I’m wondering if some expedition party has rediscovered it? Maybe that’s where the disks are coming from.”

…Looked Like ‘Ball of Cotton’—“I thought at first it was a ball of cotton,” Mike Miller… said, “But I called my brother Dale, who was an anti-aircraft gunner in the South Pacific, and he said it must be one of the saucers from Mars that the neighbors are talking about…”

Miami (FL) Herald, p. 1B, July 7, 1947

Flying Discs Reported Over Miami—Anglers See Objects

…The airborne discs have been the subject of much discussion and have been described as space ships from Mars by an occult magazine editor, “saucer hysteria” by a psychiatrist and “spots in front of peoples’ eyes” by an astronomer…

Vidette (IN) Messenger, July 7, 1947

REPORTS SPOTTING 'DISC' HERE (headline)

Man Insists He and Wife Saw Object

A Valparaiso man today added his testimony to the growing list of American citizens who are convinced there is "funny business" going on in U.S. skies... According to his story, the local man and his wife were driving to Valparaiso from Hebron and were in the vicinity of the Porter county home when he spotted the celestial "saucer." The phenomenon looked like a "new moon," Kueniger said... "After about ten seconds it seemed to turn on its side and when the sun reflected on it, the object looked like a big mirror. It turned on its side again and simply disappeared..."

If you have been worried about the flying discs, particularly in the fear they might be something from out of space, you may rest assured they are not.

That is the opinion of Dr. Raymond T. Birge, professor of physics at the University of California and chairman of the Department of Physics on the Berkeley campus, who declared today it would be physically impossible for inter-stellar objects to fly about as the discs are described.

"If they were from out of spacethey would come in and land with a bang," he explained. "They would not fly about parallel to the earth. Anything coming from out of spacewould arrive so fast you wouldn't see it. The attraction of the earth would bring it in at a speed of seven miles a second..."

The only man in the Fayetteville vicinity reporting to have seen a "flying saucer" -- Henry Seay, a farmer -- is unimpressed by reports from elsewhere in the nation that the "saucers" are invaders from outer space or remote control aircraft.

"Maybe the things which people have seen in Texas are man-made machines," Seay said today, "but what I saw was entirely natural. I believe they were caused by whirl winds high in the air." According to Seay's theory, the oval-shaped, glowing bodies which swept over his farm two miles north of Fayetteville on Highway 71 Friday and Saturday nights were a product of wind and soil erosion.

"There are glowing sands in many parts of the country," he said, "I believe the saucers I saw were simply sand sucked into the air by whirl winds." He recalled seeing similar "saucers" years ago in North Carolina. The things are fairly common there, he said, where many of the natives believe they are spirits of the dead. Glowing sands, fox fire and St. Elmo's fire are also common in that region, he said..

Washington, D.C.—(UP)—Official Washington was sure today that it knew what the flying saucers were NOT—but it hadn’t the faintest idea what they were. The army air forces said they had the matter under investigation. Preliminary study has revealed that the flying discs are not: 1. Secret bacteriological weapons designed by some foreign power, 2. New-type army rockets, 3. Space ships. …Officially, the AAF said it is “keeping an open mind” because the disks have been reported by so many normally responsible persons… Skeptics got a rude awakening when a guided missile expert attached to the naval research laboratory claimed to have seen one of the saucers. Dr. C. J. Zohn said he and two fellow-scientists spotted it June 29 near White Sands, N.M. But when he reported the find to the army, he said, he got nothing but knowing smiles… High-ranking U.S. army officers… discounted theories that the disks might be secret weapons for use in bacteriological warfare. They said it was significant that none of the disks had yet registered on army radar… Dr. L. R. Hafsted, executive secretary of the Joint Research and Development Board, said he couldn’t figure out why people wasted so much time talking about the saucers. He could describe them, he said, in one word—“poppycock!”

[Note: The Pentagon's Joint Research and Development Board was later implicated in 1950 as containing a top secret group of scientists looking into the "modus operandii" of the saucers. See Smith Papers. It is interesting that a JRDB rep was already debunking the saucers on the same day the Pentagon was denying they were "space ships". Further, the JRDB met at the Pentagon with acting Army Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt Vandendberg in a suddenly called meeting the morning of July 8, 1947. This was simultaneous with another meeting of staff officers at Roswell discussing what was happening there. See Vandenberg and Haut pages. See also JRDB head Dr. Vannevar Bush denying any knowledge of the saucers in other stories.]

The mystery of the flying saucers was back Tuesday where it was a week ago with one possible exception. The army said it knew not what they were. The army air forces said they were investigating, but were certain the strange disks were not: 1—Secret bacteriological weapons designed by some foreign power. 2—New type army rockets. 3—Space ships…

The Washington Daily News, p. 2, July 8, 1947

The Saucers

1. They’re Not Real 2. They’re From Another Dimension

3. One’s Worth $3000 4. Einstein Never Heard of ‘Em

WASHINGTON—Official Washington was sure today it knew what the flying saucers were NOT—but it hadn’t the faintest idea what they were. The AAF said preliminary study has revealed that the flying discs are not: 1. Some foreign power’s secret bacteriological weapons;2. New-type Army rockets, and 3. space ships.

LOS ANGELES—R. Dewitt Miller, authority on psychic phenomena, said today there are at least 100 cases in the last 150 years, in which “disc-like” objects have been seen in the sky. Mr. Miller advances three theories for the present saucers: (1) A new weapon; (2) from Mars or some where outside the earth, and (3) from some other dimension of time and space.

HOLLYWOOD-- Orson Welles, the original man from Mars broadcaster, said today he didn’t have a thing to do with the flying discs. “Once was enough,” he finished.

Eugene (OR) Register-Guard, p. 1, July 8, 1947

Army Reports ‘Disk’ Found in New Mexico

(Article carried in many newspapers)

…(Editor’s Note: R. Dewitt Miler, one of the world’s foremost authorities on psychic phenomena and author of “Forgotten Mysteries,” has spent 15 years accumulating authenticated case histories of inexplicable happenings…)

BY R. DEWITT MILLER

LOS ANGELES—(U.P.) There have been thousands of reliable reports during the last 150 years of strange things seen in the sky. There are at least 100 cases in which the queer objects were said to have “disk-like” form. Never have reports of strange sky phenomena been so widespread and so uniform as the “flying saucers.” …It seems to me the three most likely explanations—and at this point only guesses—are: 1. The Army and Navy are experimenting with a new weapon. Although they have denied it, there is much in favor of this explanation. 2. The disks actually are from Mars or somewhere outside the earth.The fact that similar objects were seen before the invention of aircraft strengthens this explanation. There has been increasing evidence of life on some other planets. If they are Martians, I would like to meet one. 3. They are things out of other dimensions of time and space. Certain thinkers in abstract science long have held that some other dimensional being conceivably could enter our world.

Toledo (OH) Blade, p. 4, July 8, 1947

Welles Disclaims Link to Saucers

Chicago Times, July 8, 197

Welles recalls hoax scare

Dunkirk (NY) Evening Observer, p. 3, July 8, 1947

WELLS NOT OVERLY IMPRESSED BY DISCS

Hollywood (UP) – Orson Welles, who once “scared the shirts” off Americans with an invasion from Mars broadcast, said today he didn’t have a thing to do with the flying saucers. “Once was enough,” he said. The actor-producer-writer… pointed out that during his 1938 radio hoax dozens of Americans reported seeingspace shipslanding. “People are imaginative and gullible,” he said. “I’ll bet 10 to 1 this will file out.”

The Victoria (TX) Advocate, p. 6, Afternoon, Tuesday, July 8, 1947

Discs Seen as Invaders From Mars

Advocate Reporter Explains New Celestial Mystery

By Carl Hooper

…The flying saucers are visitors from outer space.They may be from Mars, may be from Venus, may be from almost anywhere except the earth. For all anyone knows, they’re from the moon… The best guess is that the discs are from Mars. Mars is the nearest the earth… If Mars is inhabited, its civilization is probably older and more advanced than ours, because there is reason to believe it is an older planet… If the visitors had enough fuel (probably atomic energy) to make the trip to earth, they would certainly have enough left over to fly around for a while after they got here—the fact that they made the trip at all presupposes a practically inexhaustible supply of power. What, then, could be more natural than for the interplanetary commuters to take a sight-seeing tour of the country, taking serial snapshots, outrunning the curious native aircraft… and trying to judge the hospitality they would meet if they landed? If they decided the earth was worth colonizing but that its inhabitants were incorrigible, they might very well turn around and go back to Mars, returning in five or six years with an invading armada. The present crop of discs, of course, is hardly more than a task force… Say there were a dozen discs, each manned by Martian scientists. By the time the creatures got ready to go home, they’d probably have the place mapped out, and with the data they could supply, their superiors would have an easy time arranging for an invasion later on. Of course, they discs may land yet. Perhaps they have, and simply haven’t been seen or reported. And it’s always possible that they either have visited other countries and have not been reported or have not yet visited them but are planning to…

Take the ridiculous hypothesis of the alarmists, for example—the idea that the discs are a Russian secret weapon. Let these people realize that the Russians would in case parade a secret weapon before us… As to the theory that the discs are an American secret weapon, Army, Navy, and government sources in general have said, time after time, that they are completely mystified by the discs, a statement it would be perfectly ridiculous for them to make if they were working on something of the sort, in which case the proper comment would be “no comment”…

Now for the scientific evidence in favor of the interplanetary hypothesis. To make a trip through space, an object has to depend almost entirely on gravitational attraction... A spaceship might use power to clear the gravitational field of its own planet…

Toledo (OH) Blade, p. 4, July 8, 1947

Vet Airline Pilots Say It Isn’t So

ATLANTA, Ga., July 8 (UP)—Veteran airline pilots here today poured cold water on the report of flying discs, asserting that they had seen nothing in the sky during thousands of miles of travel but “airplanes and clouds.” …T. P. Ball, chief pilot for Delta Airlines, attributed it all to “imagination—unless I get a better explanation or see one myself. It certainly doesn’t seem to be the first wave of an invasion from Mars.”

On July 8th UP reported from Atlanta that airline pilots were throwing cold water on the reports. … T. P. Ball, chief pilot for Delta Airlines, termed all reports to be “imagination” …It certainly doesn’t seem to be the first wave of an invasion from Mars.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. 6 (Editorial), July 8, 1947

Flying Imaginations

There was need for something like the flying saucers to relieve the summer doldrums… The American public hasn’t had so much fun since Orson Welles’ invasion from Mars… There was a happier time when the saucers would have been dismissed philosophically as a natural phenomenon, the meteors mistaken for “ghost rockets” last year in Sweden. But man’s mastery of the air, his constant progress toward self-destruction makes any aerial phenomenon, real or imagined, a matter of concern. We wish we could still believe that any disturbance in the sky was just a prank of nature. Now, however, one must also reckon with the possibility that if people really do see something unusual it may be the handiwork of man, threatening the world with some hideous new surprise.

Whether meteoric, atomic, planetaryor imaginary, so-called ‘flying saucers,’ reported seen catapulting through the heavens from coast to coast, fit realistically into the temper of the times. With talk of Russia and atoms and rockets and jet planes and supersonics and radar and other mysteries holding the spotlight, the pattern isn’t upset by ‘flying saucers’. To the man of average unscientific intelligence, this new phenomenon is no more inexplicable than is his ordinary radio or the explosive potential of uranium. …They may be visitants from other planets hurling pieplates at us from some space ship anchored above the stratosphere. They may be atoms escaping from Oak Ridge…

Chicago Daily Times, editorial page, July 8, 1947

Editorial Opinion of The TIMES

Discs or Delusions?

All we know about the disc jitters sweeping the nation is, as Will Rogers used to say, what we read in the papers…We suppose that many of the flying saucers that have been sighted are optical illusions. But to many usually-qualified observers, such as airplane pilots, have been “seeing things” to brush off the entire series as mass hysteria or chain reaction optical illusions. It has been suggested the flying saucers are part of a “super-secret” military research program, but that’s denied in Washington. If it was “super-secret,” such a denial would be necessary anyway. But the military authorities themselves are out looking for the discs, although the right-hand may not know what the left is doing. We have a hunch a good deal of the uneasiness caused by the discs lies in the silence of our War Department. If our military men do know the answers, the public’s concern would be lessened. But the very fact that our military men SEEM buffaloed too, isn’t good for the nerves. The next war, if it comes, could begin under just as mysterious circumstances, and the military would have to react quicker than they seem to have in the case of the flying saucers.

It has further been suggested that the strange objects may be visitors from a distant planet. We used to laugh at theories like that but since the atomic bomb went off at Hiroshima, we don’t laugh so much at the Superman or Buck Rogerscomics any more. If the flying discs are visitors from Mars, we hope they’ll land soon. Maybe they’ve got the answers to the world jitters that we were suffering from long before the first saucer was sighted. On second thought, maybe it would be better if they’d go back to wherever they came form and just leave us alone.

Everybody’s Baffled By Flying Disks But They Have Plenty of Explanations

…Only one person of those interviewed however, took the “I’ll Believe It When I See It” stand on the matter. When asked her views as to possible explanation of the flying puzzles, Mrs. G. C. Parsons… said: “Of course I could put forth some idea about invaders from Mars, since just about any explanation would be as logical, but I still think it’s strictly a matter of somebody’s imagination…”

St. Petersburg (FL) Times, p. 6 (Editorial), July 8, 1947

Those Spots Before Our Eyes

Some folks call this the silly season. …many Americans claim to have seen, heard, and even photographed flying saucers, cavorting around in the sky. We have theories ranging from the sober suggestion that the army or navy may be experimenting with radio-controlled aircraft of a new pattern to the tongue-in-cheek guess that scientists from Marsmay be checking up on rumors that there is life on the earth… Americans are taking a ribbing from British cousins, in retaliation for all the fun we have poked at their Loch Ness “monster.” Communist commentators in Europe are chortling over what they interpret as signs of jitters in a country that has been moving steadily to the right… At the moment Americans are kidding themselves, too, and fairly bursting with curiosity. But there is, after all, a very thin and intangible barrier between fantasy and reality, between the incredible and the believable. Man conceived the idea of mechanical flight centuries ago, yet there were Americans in this century who scoffed when told that the crazy Wright brothers had lifted a powered kite off the sands at Kitty Hawk. It seems only yesterday that atomic weapons were reserved for Buck Rogers and others of his comic strip kind, but the atomic age opened with terrifying impact upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since the dawn of the atomic age nations have been testing supersonic planes, perfecting rockets so they can travel incredible distances, looking toward a perhaps not-distant era of push-button warfare…

“…When they first started telling about flying saucers I thought it was a lot of bunk… When I first heart about it, I thought people were going nuts like they did when Orson Welles put on his man from Mars broadcast. …It may be the army or navy is fooling around with something… I remember a few months ago I read about something like this happening in England and Sweden. The Swedes were seeing some kind of rocket gadgets going over at night and didn’t know what they were. Then a little while later, there were stories in the paper of something flying over England at night. They thought it was some kind of fast plane. They even picked it up on radar. But as far as I know they never found out what it was.” [This 1948 USAF Top Secret documentshows that

Swedish experts thought they were extraterrestrial.]

Denver Post, p. 8, July 8, 1947 (Editorial)

Rhymatorial: Flying Disks

Obscure is the wherefore and why, the when and the how come and who of the fast-flying disks in the sky seen by the well-favored few. Each analyst has his own views. Some hint of a Soviet plot; others seek out psychic clues, hysteria, likely as not… Logic is useless and quaint when men from Mars are our lodgers. And reason’s voice is quite faint in a world straight out of Buck Rogers…

Milwaukee Journal, p. 3, July 9, 1947 (widely reported story)

Shakespeare and the Bible Find Way Into Disk Theories

…In Oshkosh, Mrs. Florence Jackowski, a Bible reading housewife, reread Chapters 36 through 38 of the Book of Job and felt that she had found the answer to the national enigma. She said that the passage said in effect: “When man becomes too vain and smart, some divine being will send things of various sizes and shapes through the air to confound and confuse man.” A heavenly hoax—and high time.

Milwaukee Journal, p. 3, July 9, 1947 (widely reported story)

‘Time to Ease Tensions’

Toledo (OH) Blade, p. 3, July 9, 1947

Senator Sees Possible World Order Help

WASHINGTON, July 9 (AP)—Sen. Glen H. Taylor (D. Idaho) said today he almost hoped the flying saucers will turn out to be space shipsfrom another planet. “They would end our petty arguments on earth,” the “singing cowboy” told a reporter. He said the “mere possibility” that the spinning circles might be hostile would “unify the peoples of the earth as nothing else could.” Senator Taylor, who is plugging hard for a United States of the world, added, “you’d have world government so quick it would make your head spin.” The senator said that no matter what the saucers are they “can’t be laughed off. If they’re something we’ve invented,” he said, “we’d better take note that other people can invent them too. If it’s the Russians, we’d better look at our ‘hole card’ and realize we’re not the only ones with inventive genius. Even if it’s only a psychological phenomenon, Senator Taylor says, it’s a sign of what the world’s coming to…

Shanghai North China Daily News, July 10, 1947

Captive ‘Flying Disc’ Is Weather Device

July 9--UP--…In Washington, Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho said today he almost hopes the “flying saucers” will turn out to be space ships from another planet. Would Unify Earth. He said, “They would end our petty arguments on earth. The mere possibility that the spinning circles might be hostile would unify the peoples of the earth as nothing else would “unify the peoples of the earth as nothing else could.” Senator Taylor, who is plugging hard for a United States of the world, added, “You’d have world government so quick it would make your head spin. No matter what the saucers are they can’t be laughed off. If they’re something we’ve invented, we better take note that other people can invent them too. If it’s the Russians, we’d better look at our hole card and realize we’re not the only ones with inventive genius. Even if it’s only a psychological phenomenon, Senator Taylor says, it’s a sign of what the world’s coming to…”

…Fort Worth Roswell's celebrated "flying disk" was rudely stripped of its glamour by a Fort Worth army airfield weather officer who late today identified the object as a weather balloon. …That was the word that many editors had been hoping for. The people who had been debunking the flying disk story weren't quite certain whether they wanted a solution to be found. Of course, a big story on flying disks would be fine, most of them thought, but it's a good story as it is. A solution might be more than embarrassing. It might be calamitous. What if there really were"men from Mars!"

(Drawing of finned flying saucer with pilot) “Here’s flying saucer as envisioned after hearing latest ‘eyewitness’ reports. This saucer has everything but the cup and a man from Mars in the cockpit.”

Early post-WWII Martian invasion references

In 1896, British author H. G. Wells first popularized the idea of an intelligent civilization on Mars hell-bent on invading Earth in his sci-fi novel "War of the Worlds." Orson Welles did a radio play version of "War of the Worlds" on Halloween, 1938, creating a national scare. You see many references to Welles' and his infamous broadcast, even before the "flying saucers" made their dramatic appearance in late June 1947. The saucers were also often compared to Welles and his broadcast as examples of public mass hysteria or on their grip on the popular imagination . Also notice many references to possible aliens in flying saucers being "men from Mars" (only very rarely as "aliens"). Most of the time, such references were made sarcastically, whimsically, or dismissively, but not always, particularly with letter writers or some columnists.

Charles Fort was also the first researcher to document printed accounts of unknown aerial phenomena earlier in the century and to speculate that they might be extraterrestrial visitations. There are also a number of references to Fort's work when the saucers finally appeared in a big way in the U.S.

Bradford (PA) Era, p. 1, July 9, 1947

America’s Newest Guessing Game—What Are Those Flying Saucers, Were Are They From, Where Do They Go?

Kingsport (TN) News, Wednesday, p. 1, July 9, 1947

Bughouse Square Has Answer—Several Of Them In Fact—To ‘Flying Saucers’

Nashville Tennessean, p. 1, July 9, 197

All Over the Nation People Talk Saucers

--T-Bone Steaks High in the Sky Or Propaganda

By Bernard Gavzer

Chicago—AP—“Bughouse Square, Chicago’s refuge of the self-styled Intelligentsia, Tuesday attributed the flying discs to everything from Martian exploration to ‘planes carrying T-bone steaks because they’re an high.’ …Herbert ‘Cosmic Kid’ Shaw said he favors a theory that the discs are evidence of activity from other planets. He said this is probable because even science now has a ‘wide open view of the possibility that life exists on some planets.’

The people in Mars ‘have an understanding of cosmic process in advance of ours and have a theory that the interpenetration of radiation of energy into interstellar space holds the solar systems together,’ Shaw said, all in one breath too. He added that the Martians now are making explorations to prove their cosmic theory and that this explains the flying saucers.

‘Porkchops Charlie,’ a knight of the open road and mouthpiece for the hoboes of America, said he witnessed flying discs numerous times ‘mostly while riding the boxcars.’ He declared he believed the saucers were moving shadows between the sun and earth that travel so fast that they deceive the eye because of their ‘electric vibrations’.”

It Was Bound to Happen

Huntington, W. Va.—AP--…A subscriber called the Herald-Dispatch Tuesday night and inquired anxiously if it was that Hal Boyle was the prisoner of the green-haired O’Rune from Marsaboard a flying saucer. The AP columnist in his stint for Tuesday had related the fanciful incident, which had its origin in a New York beer garden. P.S.: Another chapter of Boyle’s hair-raising adventure will appear in Wednesday’s edition.

Nashville Tennessean, p. 1, July 9, 1947

All Over the Nation People Talk Saucers

--Local Student Says He Saw Disks Over City

One man, apparently sane and sober, wrote the editor of The Nashville Tennessean, a long interesting letter about his brush with a couple of Men from Mars on a nearby flying field. These strange little men, “all heads and arms and legs, glowing like fireflies,” landed and alighted from a flying saucer as he drove along a highway, the man wrote. The man from Nashville and the Men from Mars exchanged greetings (in sign language) and the saucer finally took off in a cloud of dust, so the letter says…

Prescott (AZ) Evening Courier, p. 2 (Editorial), July 9, 1947

Everybody Sees ‘em!

…Those flying discs, saucers, whachamacallums. …About as sensible explanation of what these strange things are as we have seen is found in Hal Boyle’s story of his ride on the darn things. He says they come from Mars. Well, maybe he’s right. …And until the army or navy or the powers that be choose to release come information about them, your guess is about as good as ours as to what they can be. …they may be like the great sea snakes which mariners are seeing every now and then, maybe a myth, maybe real, maybe an optical illusion.

Prescott (AZ) Evening Courier, p.4, July 9, 1947

Boyle Relates Experiences As Prisoner on Flying Disc

By Hal Boyle

Don’t tell me these flying discs are imaginary… All you have seen is the reflection of the sides where patches of the infra-invisible paint were burned off these huge space ships as they passed too close to the sun on their way here from Mars. Yes, Mars! I am a prison about a 1947 model “Flying Saucer” from another planet. …”Well how do you like your first ride on a flying saucer, Orson Welles?” leered the green man. “You’re on the way to a place where there are more Martians than there ever were in New Jersey.” [allusion to Welles’ 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, where Martians landed in N.J.] …”I’m Blamiston X-Ray O’Rune from Mars,” said the green man…”

Abilene (TX) Reporter-News, p. 15, July 9, 1947

Boyle Skips Across Country on Flying Saucer With Green-Haired Man From Mars

(Editor’s note: Our Hal Boyle, returning from a two-day absence, insists he is the first man to come back alive from a trip on a “flying saucer.” …But we are turning down his expense account… which is what five cents a mile comes to after 48 hours in his 1,200-mile-an-hour conveyance). [Another reference to Kenneth Arnold’s clocked speed]

By Hal Boyle

NEW YORK, July 8 (AP)—Safe after 48 hours and 57,600 miles in a flying saucer from Mars! And now I can tell the world the story of what happened after Balmiston X-ray O’Rune, the eight-foot, green-haired Martian pilot, snagged me off a barstool and took me riding in a space ship. You will remember that Balmiston—I got to calling him “Balmy”—and 499 other Martian pilots came here in flying saucers on a universe-wide “treasure hunt” sweepstakes. The game was to find and take to Mars Orson Welles and eleven other difficult objects…”

Salt Lake City Deseret News, p. 3, July 9, 1947

The Flying Discs

By Bob Considine

DENVER—(INS)--…About those flying discs… the furore raised by the objects… is a grim footnote to this fretful truce we call the peace. The A-bomb, the hints of bacteriological warfare, Russian rockets over Sweden, rudderless rumors about a new helium bomb, U.N.’s sharp cleavages, the physical and moral crackup of Europe and Asia, and the spread of Russian toward the English Channel all have conspired to create a perfect prelude to the current disc jitters. A boogey-man radio broadcast such as the one that fellow Welles once made in the carefree thirties might in these days produce genuine panic, and cause the generals to bristle out of retirement roaring orders to their first line of defense—their public relations officers… I was in Sweden last fall checking on a somewhat similar phenomenon, the Russian rockets. The Swedish Air Force had about 50,000 declarations in its possession, in which witnesses described seeing the things pass overhead. In the case of the Russian rockets there was a hard reality to deal with. The Russians and the German V-weapons men they rounded up at Peenemunde and put to work on advance designs, had produced a bigger and longer-ranging V-1… Atomic energy machines… could not possibly cause metal discs to go flying through the air. It is not possible to build an atomically-powered airship at this time… Authorities familiar with secret weapons were forced to fib so much during the war that their scornful denials of the existence of flying discs actually corroborate the discs in the minds of some Americans…

Modesto (CA) Bee, p.16 (Editorials), July 9, 1947

Sky ‘Saucers’ Are Latest Mass Hysteria Example

…Fear of Nature is being replaced by man’s conquest of the natural laws. The development of the atom bomb opened up an unlimited field for the play of imagination of what might happen… One person remarking on the “flying saucers” aptly summarized this feeling when he said, “I don’t believe it, but nothing would surprise me.” …Predictions by charlatans and so-called scientists of the end of the world have produced, in numerous cases, mass hysteria. And, of course, one of the classic examples of mass panic was Orson Welles’ Man From Mars broadcast…

The Hartford Courant, p.1, July 9, 1947

Gromyko to Veto Saucers Is Rumor

... of the flying saucers instead of the normal interplanetary speculation. The FBI headquarters here is silent except for an occasional collective groan from ... (Missing rest of article—Proquest)

Los Angeles Times, p. 2, July 9, 1947

Disgusted Ab Dopes Disks as Airy D.T.’s

…Professor Hiatus Snodgrass of the Pacoima Interplanetary Cosmic Gravitation U-239 Institute (he sharpens lawnmowers by appointment), whom I was diskussing the disks with yesterday, advanced a most uninteresting theory. He says what has happened is either: 1—A gooseberry pie factory slew up in Pocatello; 2—A squadron of flat pelicans buzzed Pismo Beach, or 3—What people has been seeing is light reflected from a flight of hysteria…

Toronto DailyStar, p. 1, July 9, 1947

WORLD END OR MARS ATTACK LONDON ‘SAUCER’ SCARE FUN

London, Ont., July 9—Two London women have been caught up in he “flying saucer” whirligig and it has left them both just a little nettled. Mrs. James Ferguson... is foretelling either the end of the world or an attack from Mars. She doesn’t know which but she finds the build-up most entertaining. Mrs. Alton Upthegrove has a cylinder on her hands which no one has been able to identify yet, but it landed on the front lawn of her Turnbull’s Grove summer home last night in a glare of what she was was cerise light... after residents of the district reported seeing a “bright red light.”

...Mrs. Ferguson began her speculations Tuesday night between 8:30 and 8:45 when she saw a “flying saucer,” the second of two spotted by the Ferguson family... Mrs. Ferguson said she and her husband, James, and her daughter, Kathleen, were standing at their front door listening to an altercation farther along the street when Kathleen glimpsed the first “yo-yo.” “Kathleen saw what she thought was a shooting star,” Mrs. Ferguson says, “but it went so fast neither my husband nor I got a look at it. But we all watched the sky and pretty soon we saw another come out of the south and go north.

“The one I saw was silver-colored and shaggy at the ends. In the middle ofit was a bright burning light and there was a silver ring around the whole thing. We kept it in sight for two or three minutes and then, travelling very fast, it disappeared. It was no shooting star. It was much bigger than a star it it left no trail behind it. There was no smoke and there was no fire in its wake.”

Mrs. Ferguson says her glimpse of the celestrial phenomenon has set her thinking. “Personally, I think it might be the end of the world, or even an attack from Mars... It could be either. But whichever it is, it’s certainly entertaining...

“There’s an airplane… Nearby is a small Yankee naval air station left from the war… still they patrol over your plantation and mine—to protect us from the men from Mars, no doubt! Ha! Ha!" ["Men from Mars" was sometimes used for any invading, hostile force or army, such as the Germans during WWII.]

Green (IA) Recorder, p. 1, May 5, 1947

Local Family Visited By An Unexpected Missile Last Week

Incident Similar to H. G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” Only on Smaller Scale, Causes Furore in Raymond Family

…Mr. Raymond was in the back yard and Mrs. Raymond was engaged in her house work when they were both startled by a loud noise. …their attention was attracted by a hissing noise… Upon investigation they found the noise to be issuing from a metal object which was glowing hot from some chemical reaction. …The object is cylindrically shaped, about fifteen inches in length, an inch and half in diameter, with rounded ends, one end of which has a threaded opening. All labels and paint were burned off by the intense heat. …Reliable authority has labeled the ‘surprise bomb’ as a unit from a cluster of oxygen tanks used by crew members in high altitude flying… H. G. Wells, English author who recently died, has forecast many of our modern day developments in his science fiction novels of the early part of the century. In his ‘War of The Worlds,’ a space ship from Mars, of course much larger than this present visitor, caused merely idle curiosity until its menace developed. If the predictions of Well’s hold true this incident could have been the first step of a deliberate interstellar invasion.

Waterloo (IA) Daily Courier, p. 4 (editorial page), May 23, 1947

Strictly Personal (nationally syndicated column by Sydney J. Harris)

Harris: Threat of Mars Might Unite Our World

…Is there life on Mars? I devoutly hope the answer is affirmative. Our only hope is that life does exist on Mars.Suppose, for example, the astronomers discovered a different species of people living on Mars. How do you suppose everyone down here would feel about it? We’d be scared silly, that’s what. We’d be wondering and fearing how far along the Martians have come with their spaceships and rocket planes. We’d be forced to prepare a plan against a possible invasion from these aliens. …All factionalism and nationalism would be forgotten in the common defense against those frightening Martians with two heads, radar-tentacles for ears, and death-dealing rays. …God only knows what those fiends from Mars are like! …All it would take is the threat of another inhabited world to make this world recognize how dependent all of us are on one another. It may take too long for love to unite us. Fear is a quicker catalyst. …Come on, men from Mars, we’re waiting for you.

[Note: the following Godzilla-like scare in Japan generated by a radio play was added because of its similarity to the Orson Welles' "War of the World's" scare, a similarity not lost on the newspapers at the time.]

Windsor (Ont.) Daily Star, p. 14, May 29, 1947

Faked Battle With Monster Too Realistic

By United Press TOKYO—An army radio station was too realistic today in a news style broadcast of a faked battle between U.S. troops and a savage “20-foot sea monster” in the streets of Tokyo. Many listeners believed what they heard. For more than three hours they deluged the Tokyo broadcasting station and official army agencies with phone calls. The calls were from Americans and British. The portion of the Japanese population which understands English apparently was completely unaffected…

Windsor (Ont.) Daily Star, p. 4 (Editorials), May 30, 1947

More Mars Stuff

When a radio station in Tokyo broadcast a dramatized version of a fight with a fierce sea monster, it was besieged with calls from people who took them seriously. So that’s where Orson Welles is now!

Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald, p. 6, Fri. May 30, 1947

Army Told It Too Well

TOKYO, Japan, May 29 (UP)—An Army radio station described for a gag today a “battle between American soldiers and a “20-foot sea monster” in the streets of Tokyo. The description was so vivid Gen. Douglas MacArthur was reported to have been fooled, along with thousands of other Americans and Britons. For more than 3 hours, the telephones of radio station WVTR and of Army agencies were clogged with telephone calls from Americans and Britons, some of whom frankly were frightened. According to a member of the radio station’s staff, one caller was MacArthur himself…

Indian Express (Madras), p. 1, June 1, 1947

THE JOKE THAT WENT TOO FAR

TOKYO, May 30 (Reuters) The United States occupation authorities here were today investigating a hoax by American armed forces radio station in Tokyo which interrupted last night’s regular programme to announce that “a sea monster” stampeding through the suburbs with a 20-foot tail had landed on the Tokyo-Yokohama road, derailed trains and smashing buildings. Listeners were told to barricade themselves indoors. …Hundreds of foreign and Japanese women and children became hysterical. The military police with machine-guns were mobilised, and the Japanese Police were told to stand by to tackle the monster…

Tuscaloosa (AL) News, p. 4 (Editorial), June 2, 1947

All Is Quiet

American troops have just had the wits scared out of them by a radio broadcast of an invasion by an imaginary sea monster. The broadcast over an Army station in Tokyo is reminiscent of the Mars invasion fantasy perpetrated by wonder boy Orson Welles several years ago. The station even received inquiries as to the truth of the sea monster attack from the office of General MacArthur, from the chief of the Counter-Intelligence Corps and from the night offer at Military Police Headquarters. The broadcast described a monster of unknown origin, 20 feet long, which demolished two Japanese fishing boats before invading the mainland. Further “news” breaks described how military policemen were attacking the monster with flamethrowers. Then an announcer “interviewed” the monster, which spoke in a soprano voice. The Welles-like broadcast was planned in celebration of the fifth anniversary of the army forces radio network. Nobody is celebrating now… The sea monster thriller shows us just how far removed is this day from the day less than two years ago when an atomic bomb wiped out Hiroshima. Things have calmed down, to say the least. The boys out there now have nothing more than bad dreams to frighten them…

Post-June 24 ET references

Private pilot Kenneth Arnold had his UFO sighting on June 24, 1947, it was first reported in the Pendleton, Oregon newspaper on June 25, and the story began going national on June 26 when AP picked up the story. Immediately, some ET references began to appear, and the references increased as more sightings were reported, particularly after July 4.

Pendleton, Ore, June 26—(AP)—A tale of nine mysterious objects—big as airplanes—whizzing over western Washington at 1200 miles an hour got skepticism today from the army and air experts. The man who reported the objects, Kenneth Arnold… clung, however, to his story of the shiny, flat objects, each as big as a DC-4 passenger plane, racing over Washington’s Cascade mountains with a peculiar weaving motion “like the tail of a “kite”…

…WASHINGTON June 26 (UP)—Conservatism has not marked all the claims made about high speed aircraft by Army and Navy aviation spokesman. But they conceded today that they have nothing in their aeronautical bag of tricks to equal the flying saucers an amateur pilot “saw” scooting across southwestern Washington state at 1,200 miles an hour. These “saucer-shaped” planes are strictly out of this planet, military experts agreed.

Eugene (OR) Register-Guard, p.1, June 27, 1947

Interest in ‘Flying Discs’ Mystery Mounts

Spokane (WA) Daily Chronicle, p.1, June 27, 1947

More Sky-Gazers Tell About Seeing the Flying Piepans

…Preacher Sees Doomsday

Bremerton (WA) Sun, p. 1, June 28, 1947

Eerie ‘Whatsit Objects’ In Sky Observed Here

Pendleton, OR, June 27 (UP)

“…I haven’t had a moment of peace since I first told the story,” the 32-year-old Arnold sighed. He said a preacher called him from Texas and informed him that the strange objects Arnold claims to have seen batting through the ozone actually were harbingers of doomsday. Arnold said he didn’t get the preacher’s name during their phone conversation, but the minister said he was getting his flock “ready for the end of the world.”

That was unnerving, according to Arnold, but it wasn’t half as disconcerting as the episode in a Pendleton café. Arnold said a woman rushed in, took one look at him and then dashed out shrieking, “there’s the man who saw the men from Mars.” She rushed out of the eating place “sobbing that she would have to do something for the children,” Arnold added with a shudder.

“This whole thing has gotten out of hand,” Arnold went on. “I want to talk to the FBI or someone. Half the people I see look at me as a combination Einstein, Flash Gordon and screwball…

But meanwhile aeronautical experts in Washington and elsewhere were teeing off on Arnold’s story with facts and figures straight out of the books. The principal point seemed to be that if Arnold’s saucers moved as fast as he claimed-1,200 miles per hour—they couldn’t have been tracked with anything short of radar…

SAN FRANCISCO, June 30 (UP)--Weird, super-fast "flying saucers" reported flashing through western skies for nearly a week had a new aerial companion Monday night--a strange "oval-shaped" aircraft. A former airline purser, Frank M. King, of San Leandro, Cal., said he and a group of friends saw "a strange looking, oval-shaped object that gleamed in the moonlight and went with tremendous speed at about 4,000 feet altitude." Another version of the martian-like aircraftwas given by a Lexington, Ky., physician. Dr. Leon Oetinger said he and three other witnesses saw a falling "silver ball" above the Grand Canyon in Arizona last Thursday, "too swift to be an airplane."

[Following excerpts from another of my webpages: Ramey and Kalberer. See also essay on Ramey and UFOs, Gen. Ramey being the one to debunk the Roswell "flying saucer" a week later as a weather balloon. Why was Ramey already debunking saucers only a few days after the original Kenneth Arnold sighting?]

Fort Worth (TX) Star-Telegram, p. 1, July 1, 1947

'BUCK ROGERS STUFF,' ARMY MEN SAY

Flying Discs Reported From More Texas Areas

Roswell (NM) Morning Dispatch, p. 1, July 1, 1947

Everyone Sees Flying Disks,

Buck Rogers Stuff The Army Says

Austin (TX) American, p. 1, Tues, July 1, 1947

Army Scoffs 'Buck Rogers'

Lubbock Couple Reports Sighting Another Of

Those Mysterious, Super-Fast Flying Disks

By The Associated Press

A Lubbock couple said they saw a silver disk-shaped object flying through the air near Smyer but in Fort Worth Army officials said all this talk about flying disks was "Buck Rogers stuff." … In Fort Worth, Col. Alfred F. Kalberer, intelligence officer of the 8th Air Force, said yesterday that "It might be true, but I doubt it." Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey, commanding general of the 8th, said he thought persons making the reports "have been seeing heat waves. Nine planes aren't likely to be doing formation flying at 1,200 miles an hour," Ramey added. He referred to an earlier report that nine disks flying in formation had been seen moving at supersonic speed.

Kalberer has 19,000 flying hours to his credit. He admitted that a saucer-like disk would be the ideal shape for sonic craft. "It doesn't stand to reason, though, that any unannounced enemy of the United States, anywhere in the world, would be sending such experimental craft over this country on trial flights," he said. "That would be tipping us off too easily." He added that he "liked the Buck Rogers stuff, and would like to believe that the United States had a craft of its own which would go that fast." He said the estimated 1,200 miles an hour was probably wrong, and that the planes might have been jet-propelled craft doing about 450.

Fort Worth (TX) Star-Telegram, Wed., p. 6, July 2, 1947

'DISCS' BEFORE THEIR EYES!

Platter Planes Poohed by Flier and Astronomer

By Robert Near

Added reports of those strange flying discs reported seen in the sky by residents of West Texas and elsewhere caused Col. Alfred F. Kalberer, 8th Air Force intelligence officer, and Oscar Monnig, Fort Worth amateur astronomer to give renewed assurance Tuesday [July 1] that "we're not being invaded by little platter-like planes from Mars." Monnig described the spontaneous series of reports as "an interesting study in human psychology."

…Kalberer cited the Orson Welles radio program a few years ago which dramatized a mythical Martian invasion and caused a sensational commotion, "and of course," he added, "there was the case of the men in Tokyo who thought they had seen a sea serpent." He said he wished heartily that "someone would put salt on the tail of one of these discs and catch it, like our grandmother used to tell us to do if we wished to catch a bird. They're such friendly little discs," he laughed. "They seem to flip around and do all sorts of kittenish antics, at varying altitudes in daytime and by the light of the moonlight and in formation at that, at supersonic speeds of 1,200 miles an hour or more."

Both he and Monnig said that the "triangulation" of the pilot flying near Pendleton, Oregon, last week when he reported the discs flying in formation between Mount Rainier and Mt. Adams could easily have been mathematically erroneous.

Officially, Kalberer was emphatic the AAF knows nothing about any such flying gadgets and until someone produces the "corpus delecti," he personally doesn't expect to believe any such stories.

El Paso (TX) Times, July 2, 1947, p. 1

'Flying Disc' Reports Make Army Laugh

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

The epidemic of people-seeing-flying-discs continued to spread in Texas Tuesday, and caused an Army intelligence chief and an astronomer to announce that"we're not being invaded by planes from Mars." Col. Alfred F. Kalberer, Eighth Air Force intelligence officer, and Oscar Monnig, Fort Worth astronomer, reassured Texans that the series of reports were nothing more than "an interesting study in human psychology." …Colonel Kalberer recalled the Orson Welles man from Mars radio skit, and its results. He also told of sea serpents being seen. He said he wished someone "would put salt on the tail of one of these discs and catch it." Officially, he was emphatic in saying the AAF knows nothing of any such flying discs. Other official sources also denied any knowledge.

...Leo Bernier... reported having seen several of them high in the sky last Tuesday afternoon [July 1].

"They were going west by southwest around 2 or 2:30," Bernier said, "and were rather silvery and shaped as though a saucer were seen edgewise." Bernier didn't say much about them until he read in the paper that they had been seen elsewhere. "I was worried that people might just laugh," he said.

...Bernier has his own explanation as good as any. "I believe it may be a visitor from another planet, more developed than ours," he says. "In my opinion we're just beginning to see things this world never dreamed of."

The Portland Oregon Journal reported on July 4 receiving a letter from an L. G. Bernier of Richland, Washington (about 110 miles (180 km) east of Mt. Adams and 140 miles (230 km) southeast of Mt. Rainier). Bernier wrote that he saw three of the strange objects over Richland flying "almost edgewise" toward Mt. Rainier about one half hour before Arnold. Bernier thought the three were part of a larger formation. He indicated they were traveling at high speed: "I have seen a P-38 appear seemingly on one horizon and then gone to the opposite horizon in no time at all, but these disks certainly were traveling faster than any P-38. [Maximum speed of a P-38 was about 440 miles an hour.] No doubt Mr. Arnold saw them just a few minutes or seconds later, according to their speed."[5] The previous day, Bernier had also spoken to his local newspaper, the Richland Washington Villager, and was among the first witnesses to suggest extraterrestrial origins: "I believe it may be a visitor from another planet." (As reported by Michael D. Hall & Wendy A. Connors, Alfred Loedding & the Great Saucer Wave of 1947, p. 27)

Pittsburgh (PA) Post-Gazette, p. 6, Letter to Editor, July 3, 1947

Sky Saucers

…I promptly dusted off that highly interesting work, the books of Charles Fort, and re-read the various accounts compiled from newspaper and magazine articles of odd things seen in the sky. It will interest the readers of your paper to learn that “flying saucers” were observed by dozens of persons, on dozens of occasions, during the latter part of the last century and the first part of the Twentieth Century. …As jet propulsion and radio controlled craft were unknown in those days, it is sensible for us to take these things at face value and consider the great probability that these odd sky craft are interplanetary constructions. It is interesting to notice how often these craft are seen during periods of climatic disturbances or appositions of Venus and Mars! AN OPEN-MINDED READER Zelienople, Pa.

Halifax, July 3. (CP) -- Whether the men of Mars are lobbing some sort of missiles at us or whether the stars are scattering big hunks of dust hasn't been determined, but the appearance of the "flying saucers" in the Maritimes has resulted in considerable speculation...

Five hypotheses were advanced Friday [July 4] to ‘explain’ the mysterious ‘flying saucers’… The theories ranged from a San Francisco layman’s flat assertion that they were ‘space ships’ from older planets to a Chicago scientist’s peevish comment that the witnesses were seeing ‘spots in front of their eyes.

…Ole J. Sneide of San Francisco said he was surprised the witnesses didn’t know they were seeing "oblate spheroid space ships from the older planets." In a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle Sneide warned the people of earth to "set up no belligerence" or they would be wiped out in less than 24 hours. He said the "masters" of the "space ship"passengers from out of this world "planted the original humanities here. They have been absent form our planet since before the fall of the Roman empire, when the Great Master left earth for the outer galaxy by fohatic teleportation," he explained. "He is now back and what is going to be depends on mankind…" Aircraft engineers at the University of California conceded that if the ‘flying saucers’ were traveling at 1,200 miles per hour [Kenneth Arnold’s reported clocked speed], as reported by some witnesses, any passengers aboard must be "out of this world."

In Los Angeles, Mead Layne, publisher of an occult magazine, said that the flying "saucers" seen throughout the country are etheric bodies from another world. Layne, who last November reported having had contact with a ‘space ship’ which was seen over San Diego, said he had received a message from the the people aboard the "saucers" through a trans-control, or medium. "These visitors are not real, ex-carnate humans but are human beings living in their own world," Layne explained. "They come with good intentions. They have some idea of experimenting with earth life. That is coming to live on the world for awhile.”

..Aircraft engineers, at the University of California conceded that if the "flying saucers" were traveling at 1,200 miles per hour, as reported by some witnesses, any passengers must be "out of this world."

SAN DIEGO (UP) -- Mead Layne, publisher of an occult magazine, said today that the flying "saucers" seen throughout the country are etheric bodies from another world. Layne, who last November reported having had contact with a"space ship" which was seen over San Diego, said he had received a message from the people aboard the "saucers" through a trans-control, or medium.

"It is possible for objects to pass from an etheric to a dense level of matter and will then appear to materialize. They then will return to an etheric condition," Layne said. "These visitors are not ex-carnate humans but are human beings living in their own world," Layne explained. "They come with good intent. They have some idea of experimenting with earth life. That is coming to live on the world for awhile."

Case 332 -- July 5, near Auburn, California: Kjell Qvale, an automobile salesman in Alameda and a former Navy pilot for five years, reported that he and a group of 50 other witnesses had watched a triangular formation of disc-like objects near Auburn at 2:30 p.m. PST, flying south. Qvale said that the discs, seen first directly overhead, "appeared to be made of metal and looked like bright silver." He added that their round outline was clearly distinguishable. The objects were in view "for three or four minutes," he said. "I have seen a lot of airplanes, and these were not airplanes. The only clue I could get as to their height, size and speed was the fact that they disappeared one at a time, high in the sky, and not over the horizon. This effect would be caused if they were very, very large and very high, and flying at a terrific speed -- l,000 miles an hour," he said. Qvale was one of the very few UFO witnesses in the 1947 wave -- one of two, to be exact -- who openly expressed the opinion that the objects seen could have been "space ships."

ALAMEDA [CA], July 7. (AP) -- Kjell Qvale, a navy pilot for five years and now the owner of an automobile company here, said today he and about 90 other persons saw a group of "flying saucers" in triangular formation near Auburn [CA] at 2:30 p m. Saturday [July 5].

"Headed south, they were in view for three or four minutes, directly overhead, in triangular formation," Qvale related. "They appeared to be of metal and looked bright silver. I could clearly distinguish their outline, which was round. I have seen a lot of airplanes and those were not planes. The only clue I could get as to their height, size and speed was the fact that they disappeared one at a time, high in the sky, not over the horizon. This effect would be caused if they were very, very large and very high, and flying at a terrific speed -- thousands of miles per hour."

Qvale said he believed they were space ships. "I thought, like most people, that the reports on the discs were crazy," the former flier said, "but now I have seen them myself. I just wish they would land so we could find out where they come from."

Washington Post, p. 1, July 8, 1947

Air Forces Intelligence Joins Search for Flying Saucers

—While Science Sneers

…A Navy flier with five years experience tabbed the discs as “space ships” after first considering all reports as “crazy.” He changed his mind, he said in Alameda, Calif. yesterday, after he and about 50 other persons saw a group of about 50 of the saucers in triangular formation near Auburn [CA] Saturday…

DETROIT, July 5—INS—A Detroit meteorologist theorized Saturday [July 5] that the mysterious flying discs may be signals from Mars. “It’s not too far fetched,” he insisted. “For a long time people have speculated on life on Mars, so why shouldn’t it be as logical for Mars to try to contact earth as let earth to try to contact Mars?” He added: “I admit it’s an unusual theory, but have you got a better one?”

Washington (D.C.) Post, p. B10, July 5, 1947

San Francisco, July 4 (U.P.)—A San Franciscan asked in a letter to the editor today what was the matter with America that it didn’t know those mysterious flying saucers were space ships from another solar system. He shuddered to think what would happen if the United States Army got tough about the reconnoitering discs. Ole J. e, San Francisco, said in a letter in “Safety Valve,” the letters column of the San Francisco Chronicle, that those flying discs were “oblate spheroid space ships from the older planets. Usually they travel in outer space with speeds approximating that of light by use of antigravity devices and hyperspace. In our space they travel much slower of course, become visible either by intent or by accident, for in their travels they use the invisibility screen,” he said. This space navigation has been going on for millions of millions of years, those “navo” having come into our galaxy originally from the greater Magellenic cloud via the lesser Magellanic cloud, 47 Turcanae, Omega and Alpha Centauri clusters. “Their masters planted the original humanities here and which did not develop sui-generis…They have been absent from our planet since before the fall of the Roman Empire when the Great Master left Earth for the outer galaxy by fohatic teleportation. He is now back and what is going to be done depends upon mankind, but my advise is that physical man set up no belligerence, for a small concentration of these discs just beyond the range of our atmosphere could clean the surface of our planet completely in a matter of less than 24 hours. Their present local headquarters is on the unseen side of our moon. I discovered this by teleportation visits hither and yon in and beyond our galaxy. Mankind, “ he concluded, “will just have to learn their physics all over again, someday, if they live. Ah! If they live!”

Abilene (TX) Reporter-News, p. 4, Editorials, July 5, 1947

Look Out Below!

Somebody is always scaring the living daylights out of us honest citizens. As if we didn’t have enough to contend with in the sphere of the known and probable, we’ve now get to wrestle with the unknown and the improbable. It’s all about those mysterious ‘flying saucers’… One Ole Sneide of San Francisco, in a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, expressed surprise at the ignorance of some people. Didn’t they know, he demanded to now, that people were seeing ‘oblate spheroid space ships from the older planets?’ Darkly he warned the earth people to be careful not to ‘set up belligerence’ or they would e wiped out in 24 hours—presumably by the space-ship gents from one of the older planets. …when Mr. Sneide starts dragging in ‘oblate spheroid space ships’ from Mars or someplace else, we lost our iron control, our nonchalance and our natural reserve… Space ships is it? At any moment we expect to hear Orson Welles come on with a running account of the latest Martian invasion. Or will it be the Moon People this time?